


Tom Riddle and the Orphan of Time

by telemain



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: AU, Second Person, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-01-29
Packaged: 2019-03-10 22:52:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13511412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telemain/pseuds/telemain
Summary: How powerful is the Room of Requirement? And what would it take to erase the most cruel Dark Lord of all time from history?





	Tom Riddle and the Orphan of Time

**Author's Note:**

> It grabbed my brain and wouldn't let go.

The idea hit you in the middle of the night, just on that edge of sleep where dreams and reality mix. 

Not that you sleep much, now. Hogwarts was invaded and taken, the Headmaster slain, a marked Death Eater taking his place, another Death Eater teaching Defense (Defense!) Against the Dark Arts. The only hope, Harry Potter and his best friends, vanished; they were too smart to come to school. The Minister for Magic, slain as well, and Voldemort would have been careless or stupid indeed to not make sure the replacement was not securely in his control. 

And Voldemort is neither careless nor stupid. 

No, you do not sleep much, but from somewhere the idea came. A Room that would grant you anything you need, anything you want. Anything you Require. 

"I need to find a way to destroy the Dark Lord. I need to find a way to destroy the Dark Lord. I need to find a way to destroy the Dark Lord. I need - " 

When you enter, and survey what the Room has provided, the parchment sheets, the potions, the broom. The golden hourglass, filled with sparkling grains like tiny fragments of diamond, six feet tall. When you enter, and realize the path that the Room has laid out. A path through Time. 

When you enter, you laugh for the first time since Dumbledore's death. You laugh, broken, and manically. 

The potions in your pouch. The parchment instructions committed to memory, and then burnt. The hourglass, with the golden chain attached to the base, spun. 

The small Time-Turners in the Ministry turn back an hour at a time. The Unspeakables have crafted ones that turn back a day at a time. 

As you spin this one, the years fall away, history undoing itself. 

And when it stops, you look to the last thing the Room has provided. A fireplace, burning bright, and a pot of Floo Powder on the mantle. "Gringotts Bank, Diagon Alley!" you call - and you are gone.

* * *

From the Bank, through the Alley, through the Leaky Cauldron to Muggle London, on a bright spring afternoon in 1935. With a sip of Felix Felicis to guide your steps, you pick your way through the streets to a Muggle orphanage. On a mission of mercy. On a mission of murder. 

Inaudibly you slip through the gate and explore, and find the boy sitting alone in a corner of the grounds, under a bent tree, where no one can see him. 

"Petrificus Totalus!" and he is frozen. 

You open his mouth and pour in a measure of the Draught of Living Death, adding two drops of Veritaserum, and he is asleep. 

You touch your wand to his temple and extract a few memories, projecting them in front of you. You shake your head, sickened and upset. "I had hoped," you say to him, and to no one, "That I could have saved you, had I caught you early enough." Even at the age of eight, he is irredeemable, cruel and arrogant. 

You take his hair, place it in the Polyjuice. Then you set about draining all of his memories, at least all of the last few years. Those go in the vial as well. Then an ounce of the blood of a Metamorphmagus, to make the Polyjuice permanent; then an ounce of the blood of the young boy in front of you, the boy who would be the Dark Lord, the boy who will die in a few minutes, to make you grow as he would, to bind the transfiguration.

Finally, you place your wand to the boy's forehead, and, laughing quietly to yourself, trace the shape of a lightning bolt on his forehead, where you have seen it so often on Harry Potter. "There is no need for me to be cruel to you. Avada Kedavra!" 

And he is gone, and in the next moment, as you drink the potion, he is back. He is you. You are him. His body, transfigured into a doll, and buried under the tree, along with your wand. 

You know why the other children despise and fear him. You make such amends as you can over the next years, until Albus Dumbledore comes to meet you, to take you to Diagon Alley to purchase your supplies, funded by the Hogwarts' Orphans' Fund. 

(You laugh, inside; you are an orphan, but not the way he means. You are an orphan of time.)

Ollivander sells you a wand, but not yew and phoenix feather. This one is stiff, ten and a half inches, oak and dragon heartstring, "excellent for Charms." You hope the phoenix feather wands stay there forever.

* * *

You're most worried about the Sorting Hat. Once placed willingly upon your head, there are no mental defenses it cannot break, even if it couldn't, it would detect them. The night before, you consider self-Obliviation, if not an overdose of the Potion of Forgetfulness. It doesn't matter, you tell yourself, what happens to you, even if the Hat gives you away; the real "Tom Riddle" is dead and buried (you have retrieved your old wand, which answers fitfully and reluctantly to you now) and thus your mission is accomplished. 

But the Sorting Hat surprises you. The Sorting Hat ... _cooperates_. 

It sees you know it, where it has not yet met you. It - through you - remembers that it has Sorted you before. It tells you what you did was as brave as any lion, as brilliant as any eagle, as crafty as any snake, and proved your love and loyalty as much as would any badger. So, it asks: where do you think you belong?

You remember where you were Sorted before, where you had begged to be sent, where you had feared to be sent. 

_Not Gryffindor,_ you implore the Hat. _Not Gryffindor, not Gryffindor._

It laughs at you, and then it tells you, very well, find your new family, and be happier than you were, in **HUFFLEPUFF!**

They welcome you, a poor orphan boy of no famous Wizarding name, or even an infamous one. They become your family, and something inside you - or perhaps a remnant of the Tom-Riddle-that-was, carried with his memories and his form and his blood - that you didn't know was hurt, that you are too used to being hurt, is healed. 

They are true friends, friends you can depend on, friendship and support and care that you can trust, and if sometimes you gaze into the Common Room fire and think of other friends of long ago - or far ahead - that you miss, they are always there to cheer you up, include you, take care of you. One example of thousands: 

When you join them on trips to Hogsmeade in third year, you protest when they buy you Butterbeer and candies and little bits from the joke shop. We each help out where we can, says one of the 6th year Prefects, Sheila, noting she's seen you staying up and helping other students study (as you seem to be picking up class material remarkably quickly) not to mention the comforting words and hot cocoa for Danny, when he found out his Muggle father had been killed in the war. 

If you still want to pay us back in terms of money, she says, then wait until you're an adult, and contribute to the Orphans' Fund, so the next boy like you will have pocket money. You wonder if the term "pay it forward" has been invented yet, and you smile through your tears. 

The next year, when you try out for the Quidditch team and make it as a reserve, she stays for hours with you, helping you after practice; the year after that, when she's left school (to play professional Quidditch) and you're promoted from the reserves to the team, you find she's left you her broom to use, a top-of-the-line broom that her parents bought her five years ago. Of course, she got a huge signing bonus; of course her team will buy her a new broom. Of course, it cost her nearly nothing to leave it behind. 

But you're moved to tears again anyway. 

And when you captain Hufflepuff to the Quidditch Cup in your 7th year, flying her broom, she's there in the stands, and she is right there as they hand you the Cup. 

You don't know it, and you never will, but you saved her life; during Voldemort's first rise, he murdered her, because her son was an Auror, and he had crossed the Dark Lord by daring enforce the laws, so Voldemort murdered all his family. Not him; just everyone to whom he was related.

* * *

After your time at Hogwarts, you feel at loose ends. You don't dare stay in England; there were a few names you recognized among your classmates: Sprout, McGonagall, Hagrid. You don't want your influence changing who marries who, when children are born, anything. What's the point of saving the world from the Dark Lord if half of Harry Potter's generation is never born? So you take yourself as far away as you can think of: New Zealand. You build yourself a life growing magical plants, helping life instead of inflicting death, and brewing potions. Riddle Apothecary. Founded 1946. You live, love, marry, and raise children. It's a good life, and it was worth it. 

It's 1985 when you find yourself back in England, and you visit Hogwarts as a matter of course; Pomona is happy to see you. While you're there, you do some quiet investigating about the people most touched by Voldemort:

James and Lily Potter are busily and happily raising their son Harry and his little sister Jennifer. 

Frank and Alice Longbottom are spoiling their only son Neville rotten. 

Hagrid teaches Care of Magical Creatures at Hogwarts and has made several advances in the breeding of new and unusual creatures. 

Severus Snape runs a pawnshop down Knockturn Alley, and is rumoured to sell Dark artifacts and restricted potions out of the back of the shop. The front of his shop is planted with flowers - unusual for Knockturn Alley - asphodel, symbolizing regret; yellow tulips, symbolizing hopeless love; and lilies. 

The list of names goes on, Voldemort's victims: Regulus Black, Quirinus Quirrel, Hepzibah Smith, Myrtle Warren; Voldemort's allies (and in a way, his victims as well): Bellatrix, the Lestranges, Lucius Malfoy. 

You could spend the rest of your life, tracing the changes you've made. 

But it's enough for you that Harry will be fine, Neville will be fine, even Hagrid is happy. 

You leave England for the last time by International Floo, and live out your life quietly, surrounded by children, and then grandchildren. None will know what you did, there will be no statue nor any memorial, but that is right. The happy lives that all of them lead are your memorial and your triumph.

**Author's Note:**

> The traveler seems obvious to me, but that's because I wrote it.


End file.
